Attached are two articles recently made available by their author, U Pandita (not the Mahasi meditation teacher of this name, but another Burmese scholar monk). The articles are a critique of two contentions in Dr. Juo-Hsüeh Shih's article, Controversies over Buddhist Nuns, namely, her claim that Buddhaghosa misinterprets the term 'anupasampanno' in his commentary to the the Vinaya's duṭṭhullārocana training rule, and the claim (made also by Gombrich) that there once existed bhikkhunīs ordained by the "ehi bhikkhunī" method.

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill

Juo-Hsüeh Shih makes an interesting assumption in her work Controversies over Buddhist Nuns when she discusses the historicity of ñatticatutthakamma ordination form in Vinaya:

Moreover, evidence in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta of the DN suggests that the Buddha himself may have used this formula [i. e., the ehibhikkhu formula]1 all his life. (352) So why did the Buddha not follow the procedure [i. e., the ñatticatutthakamma procedure]2 he had himself prescribed? (355) It is more plausible to suggest that the last stage in the evolution of the ordination process, the ñatticatutthakammaupasampadā, began after the Buddha’s death . . . (356)

Her argument can be schematized as follows:

1. If the Buddha really prescribed the ñatticatutthakamma ordination during his lifetime, he must have adopted it in giving ordination to his followers.2. But he used the older ehibhikkhu formula all his life.3. Therefore:a) Either he failed to observe his own rule,b) Or the ñatticatutthakamma ordination is a later development that has materialized only after his passing away.4. But the Buddha could not have failed to observe his own rules.5. Therefore, only the conclusion (3b) is plausible.

As seen above, her argument is based on the assumption that the Buddha was obliged to observe Vinaya rules like his followers. “No one is above the law”, she seems to say, not even the Buddha himself.

However, I find it difficult to take her assumption at face value because it contradicts the orthodox Theravādin view...

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill